


Those Eyes Bring Me Home

by kyuubi_wench



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brief appearance of Shuri at the end, Bucky's times as a Hydra guinea pig are only referenced, Gen, No Details, but as friends not as a couple, is inferred to, it's Steve n Bucky over the years, off-screen canon violence, off-screen war-time deaths, wolf!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 10:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14913428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyuubi_wench/pseuds/kyuubi_wench
Summary: I saw this beautiful piece of art on Tumblr, and immediately thought "wolf-eyes Bucky"Steve discovers Bucky's unique pretty eyes, and snippets over their lives of what those eyes are to him. (kinda)* this crosses several movie time-frames but does not include any spoilers/ stuff from Infinity War *





	Those Eyes Bring Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is snippets of Steve learning about Bucky, and wolf eyes over their years. pretty much entirely from Steve's point of view, so there is no detailed bits about Hydra Shenanigans, it's like watching a toned-down version of the movies (without the flashbacks). 
> 
> link here: http://themadknightuniverse.tumblr.com/post/145674833538/bucky for the art.
> 
> also, I don't like angst so there's a happy ending (at least as far as Black Panther in the MCU. I'm in denial of other recent movies)

Steve has known there was something different about Bucky since they'd met. It wasn't that first meeting, not really, but a few weeks later- when Bucky had helped bring him home later in the evening. It was the first time they'd hung out after the sun had started to set, and Steve never really quite forgot the way Bucky's eyes had flickered under the street-light.

 

Steve remembers, distantly, trying to tell himself it was a trick of the light, but it had been a fascination for him. His vision was shitty, for colors, but he actually understood tricks of the light, thanks, and he couldn't quite figure out why it had happened.

 

His ma's eyes don't do that. His pop's eyes didn't, either, from what he remembers. The kids at school? Nope.

 

Steve debates it, studies shine and light and asks pesky questions from people at school, but manages to only be vague enough to annoy most of them into not giving him answers.

 

He gets a lot of superstitious bullshit and a few almost-reasonable sounding answers, which none of it applies, and changes tactics.

 

He's ten to Bucky's eleven, scrawny as absolute fuck, and hates his own chest. Bucky is already kinda-starting to grow out shoulders that hint at what he may look at in years to come, but mostly they're a pair of gangly bastards. Scrawny, if people are being kind.

 

(For Steve, people are rarely kind, and the insults are typically much more colorful. He ignores as many of them as possible.)

 

Steve doesn't find it out until they're fifteen and sixteen, because Bucky is a fucking punk, and a sneaky one at that. Steve has to wear his friend down and then cons him (and that took three months, two weeks and four-almost-five days to accomplish, he was counting,  _ dammit _ .)

 

Bucky makes him swear on his whole fucking lineage to never ever ever whisper a word of this  _ not even to the dead, Steven Grant, not to the empty window at night, no one. Not a damn soul. _

 

Bucky makes him wait until his mom is away for an overnight shift and stays over, but instead of playing stupid games he pulls the blinds down tight and gets a stubby candle out from the emergency supply his mom always keeps aside. And there, in flickering candle-light, Bucky lets Steve look his fill, moving the candle to watch Bucky's eyes glow, and reflect, and  _ shine _ in ways no person's eyes should.

 

“Beka has eyes like mine,” Bucky whispers, and it's quiet enough Steve is reading his lips, not hearing it. “It's in the family.”

 

They extinguish the candle after a bit, not daring to use too much of Sarah's emergency supply stash, and Steve wants to ask- tries to ask more questions, but Bucky shakes his head and makes him swear to silence, again. Only then do they open the blinds back up, crack the window to let in some air, hang out on the thin fucking mattress while listening to the sounds of a Brooklyn summer night.

 

Steve.. doesn't let it go, but soon there are other things to take his attention. And then war blossoms cold and hungry and  _ red _ , and things change.

 

Steve doesn't want Bucky going into the army, worried if the medics will find out what's different about his friend.

 

(He doesn't find out until long, long afterwards that Buck was drafted, and didn't have much choice. Didn't find out until after Italy, after he found Buck strapped to a metal table, after they'd hurt him more than he'd imagined anyone could.)

 

The US military either hadn't figured it out or hadn't given a shit.

 

Hydra had cared. They had  _ wanted _ what those eyes had promised.

 

They didn't quite get it, though. Not while Bucky was in their remorseless care.

 

It took over a month of being out in the field and free from those assholes before Bucky showed them what those eyes really meant. It wasn't just Steve who saw this time, though- the whole team did, and there was only a few comments made the next day about Bucky being the 'mascot' for the team's name. He'd raised his lip, human once more, in a snarl reminiscent of the night before.

 

He hadn't blamed the Nazi bastards for what had been done to him, although Steve knew they'd done something. Bucky had only ever had the eyes, before, as far as he'd known. Definitely not the claws. Or the teeth.

 

In the light of day, Bucky looked normal. His hair disheveled worse than the day before, maybe slightly longer; more tired on the edges, and maybe eyes a softer shade of blue. More blood under his nails, perhaps, but that would have been normal for any of them if they'd had their hands caked as thoroughly as Buck's had been the night before.

  
  
  
  


(Years pass, of course, as time does. Steve swallows bitter regret when he wakes up and remembers Bucky's fall, and wonders distantly if even a 'wolf could have survived the fall.)

 

When he looks into the Asset's eyes a couple years later, gleaming inhuman-yellow, he tries to tell himself that it's contacts. Like the muzzle-mask, meant to make the human behind the mask more frightening, more intimidating, conceal the actual person more effectively.

 

He's not ready for when the mask falls off.

 

He's not ready for inhuman teeth to go with inhuman eyes, for familiar lips to be drawn back in a grimace that's more pain than anger, not ready at all for the eyes to slide yellow-empty to blue and  _ back _ before he can even respond.

 

He's not ready for the empty voice to ask back  _ Who's Bucky? _

 

It's a moot issue, after that. He's not leaving Bucky at the hands of this generation of Hydra any more than he would have left Bucky on that metal table decades before.

  
  
  


The first time he hears the Wakandans call Bucky  _ White Wolf _ Steve just looks at his friend with a raised eyebrow. He's in Shuri's lab-space, gloves off and in civilian clothes and feels as close to  _ safe _ as he's ever been.

 

Bucky smiles, and his eyeteeth are just a little too long for his mouth, but his eyes are mostly blue again, and his jawline is human, and his smile still pierces Steve's heart.

 

“They respect it, I respect them. Plus, you should meet T'Challa's cat. We manage to get along.” Bucky says with dead-honest seriousness. 

 

“And we all know that the cats rule here, while dogs drool,” Shuri fires back, and if it weren’t for the absolute hellish little-sister  _ smirk _ that rocks her face, Steve might almost think about being offended. 

 

Instead, it’s Bucky’s groan and about 5.6 seconds before Steve face-palms - literally, burying his face into both hands- and groans. 

 

“I got that reference.”

 

Bucky’s laughter is a prize, with his eyes glowing softly, blue lined with just a promise of the wolf, never too far away now. It’s  _ home _ .

 


End file.
